Piracy of digital content continues to be a problem in today's computing and entertainment environments. Piracy occurs when a content user, whether authorized or not, makes an unauthorized copy of some type of digital content and distributes that content to others who are not authorized recipients of such content. While acts of piracy committed by unorganized individuals are problematic, organized acts of piracy, termed commercial piracy, are even more problematic. It is estimated by some that piracy, both individual and commercial, costs owners of digital content and others more than $2,000,000,000 per year. Acts of piracy can effectively touch every type of digital content for which there is a commercial market.
One way that has emerged to protect digital content is to digitally fingerprint or watermark the content in some way that is generally imperceptible to the user when the content is used in its normally intended manner, yet provides some type of information as to the origin or owner of the content. Fingerprinting or watermarking techniques typically involve adding or manipulating the bits of the digital content in a clever way. Yet, it seems, as sophisticated as such techniques can be, some digital pirates will stop at nothing to break a technique.
One thing has become clear—if owners of digital content are to continue to commercially exploit their content, new and innovative ways are going to need to be developed to stay one step ahead of the digital pirates. These new techniques are going to need to be streamlined and efficient so as to be employed in a convenient manner, as well as solid so as to avoid breaking under the efforts of pirates.
Accordingly, this invention arose out of concerns associated with providing improved methods and systems for protecting digital content.